Making my bucket list official

Climb Mount Everest. Run with the bulls. Skydive. See Stevie Wonder perform.

When people talk about their "bucket list," they usually include items like that. Our bucket lists, of course, are the things we want to do before we die. As people age, they become more aware of the bucket list. Then it recedes.

I say that because it seems that 40-year-olds talk most about bucket lists. My 85-year-old dad? Never talks about it (or perhaps he does, but has the volume on the TV turned up so loud no one can hear him).

Anyway, it's valuable for me to share my bucket list – partly because it creates a sense of accountability, partly because it might inspire someone, partly because I'm expected to turn in 500 words a week on a subject of my choice.

My bucket list is different from yours. That's because we're different. And because my bar is set low.

Here we go . . . before I die, I hope to:

• Eat at Athenian Grill.**
• See a ventriloquist perform without cringing.
• Have my teeth cleaned by the dentist without sweating through a shirt.
• Remember that the food at the Solano County Fair sounds exotic and delicious, but usually leaves me bloated and sluggish.
• Go big.
• Go home.**
• Watch a full movie on the Lifetime Network without laughing.
• Travel to Turkey . . . or eat turkey.**
• Make an actual list of buckets: Mop, water, wooden, metal. Mo . . .
• Remember whether or not there's a second "e" in judgment (or "judgement") without looking it up.
• Get to a movie early enough to see all the pre-show programming.
• Dye my hair jet black and insist that "it's always been this way."
• Rip off each side-view mirror from my car while backing out of the garage.**
• Teach my dog to poop in the toilet.*
• Watch "The Bucket List," a 2007 Morgan Freeman/Jack Nicholson movie.
• Drink a cup of coffee every morning for a week.**
• See the Giants, 49ers and Warriors win championships.**
• Find a loophole that allows me to retransmit, rebroadcast or make another use of the pictures, descriptions and accounts of a sporting event without the express written consent of the team or league.
• Go to a concert for an Air Supply tribute band.
• Show up late to the Air Supply tribute band's concert and explain that I was making good progress, then I got lost in love.
• Challenge a traffic ticket while wearing one of those white wigs and calling the judge "your eminence."
• Time travel to be a star of a 1970s "blaxploitation" film.
• Become the first person to officially not like Sara Lee.
• Drive away from a gas station with the gas pump still connected to my car.**
• Go to an air show at Travis Air Force Base.*
• Have Stevie Wonder see me perform.
• Get back to my birth weight.
• Write a 500-word column about my bucket list.**

(*Probably won't do this. **Have already done this.)

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.